In writing The Battle of Cowpens, Reexamined, I encountered many stories and legends of the battle, some realistic, some fanciful. Cowpens was a tremendous victory at a time such things were scarce on the ground. The public clamored for news, and eagerly welcomed everything they read and heard. Some of what they received was entirely truthful. Some, less so, but in a world starved for good news from a long war, some embellishment was unavoidable.

One of the most enduring legends of the battle was the idea that Daniel Morgan ordered two volleys from his militiamen. The idea of two volleys was part of a larger conversation about the militia. They were part-time soldiers, amateurs on a field that belonged to the professionals. They lacked training and experience in the rigors of eighteenth-century set-piece battles. The standard infantry tactics of the day called for rigidly straight lines of infantry marching towards each other, firing volleys and reloading, until the last few yards separated the opposing forces, which they closed with a bayonet charge. The militiamen lacked the training to know how to accomplish these tasks, and the discipline to get them done.

Horatio Gates, the American commander at the Battle of Camden, learned to his dismay about the abilities and deficiencies of the militia. He put them in a straight line at the front of his army. They proved unable to withstand the stress of a bayonet assault by hardened British professional soldiers, and ran away. On a later date, Nathanael Greene would learn the same lesson at Guilford Courthouse. Pretending the militiamen were the equivalent of professional soldiers provided harsh lessons for the Continental generals. A much more successful template took shape at the Battle of King’s Mountain. At King’s Mountain, the Whig militia was allowed to forsake straight lines altogether. The Patriots took advantage of rocks and trees for cover and concealment, and delivered deadly, aimed shots into the Loyalists on the mountaintop.

The idea of two firings by the militia has deep roots. Henry “Light-Horse Harry” Lee included it in his 1812 memoir on the southern war. Since then, Lee’s tale of two rounds from the militia has found a place in history books to the present day. In fact, until The Battle of Cowpens, Reexamined, appeared, there was very little serious critique of Lee’s position. It was clearly time for a change.

Morgan was an innovator. He was also a learner. More than any of his colleagues in the southern theater of the war, he took in the lessons of the battles going on around him. Faced with the prospect of doing battle with Tarleton, he put his creativity to work with experience gained in the war to solve the problem of using the militia productively. His first innovation dealt with the straight lines of conventional eighteenth-century tactics. Taking a page from the King’s Mountain textbook, he allowed his first line riflemen to take advantage of the terrain, avoiding rigid lines to find cover and concealment. The riflemen, in a position to put their long ranges to advantage, returned a heavy toll of British officers and noncommissioned officers.

Gates’s experience at Camden illustrated another aspect of the problem. Once the militiamen crossed a threshold of threat, they abandoned the effort entirely, often running all the way home. An army of thousands of militiamen could melt away like a snowball in the South Carolina summer. To resolve this question, Morgan lined his men at Cowpens with the Broad River in their rear. This was a technique pioneered by Brigadier General Thomas Sumter in November 1780. Sumter, a South Carolina militia commander, met Tarleton at Blackstock’s Farm with a force composed entirely of Patriot militiamen. Sumter lined his men in front of the Tyger River. Professionals saw this position as a disadvantage; it foreclosed retreat. To Sumter, this quality was an advantage. The militia, unable to run away, had greater incentives to stay and fight.

What do these two innovations tell us about the number of volleys? Morgan was not finished implementing his innovative thinking. Controlling expectations was a necessary goal. Lee famously wrote it was “murder” to place a militia formation in the path of a British bayonet charge, and in this he made great sense. Morgan wanted the militia to soften the British for the Continentals, but knew their limits. Allowing them to fire twice and get out of the way was a providential inspiration for motivating the militia.

Although immensely logical, the idea of two volleys from the militia rests on tenuous ground. Morgan wrote a detailed report on the battle to Nathanael Greene. While he discussed his tactics in detail, he mentioned no restrictions on the number of rounds he expected from any group, regular or militia. While this absence is not a suggestion the order was a fiction, it is disappointing. Morgan’s words would have added clarity to the matter. All, however, was not lost. Thomas Young, at the time a young militia recruit, left an oral history of his experiences at Cowpens. It was collected by Joseph Johnson and published in his book, Traditions and Reminiscences, in 1851. Young, by the time of his narrative an old man long removed from military service, recalled Morgan wanted three rounds from the militia: “Just hold up your heads, boys, give them three fires, and you will be free.”

There seems no doubt Morgan capped the militia’s expectations by limiting the number of volleys he wanted from them. This was a key piece of the trifecta of innovations designed to obtain the maximum performance from these part-time soldiers. He cut off their ability to retreat, he allowed them to make use of cover and concealment, and he only wanted a limited number of volleys, after which they were free to withdraw to the rear, their duties completed and their honor intact.

With that in hand, it seems apparent Lee has the wrong end of the argument. Lee was not at Cowpens, and there is no reason to accept his word over that of an eyewitness. Lee heard something, all hearsay, and we have no way to assess the value of what he heard. Young, on the other hand, heard Morgan’s orders directly from Morgan. So, three volleys, not two, and the militia’s duties were satisfied.

However, even this resolution does not end the entirety of the debate. Morgan fielded a mass of riflemen in addition to the customary musket-wielding militia. The rifle and the musket brought different capabilities and drawbacks. The rifle’s range was considerably longer. A man at 300 yards was fair game for the riflemen, far out of reach for the muskets. On the other hand, the rifle took much longer to reload, minutes rather than seconds.

The British at Cowpens lined up for battle 300 yards from the Americans. Moving forward briskly, they would cover this distance in a few brief moments. A rifleman might reload in one minute, often in two. The riflemen, taking their positions with their weapons loaded, could fire once, then, at most, reload and fire again. Once the British closed to bayonet range, the riflemen had orders to withdraw to the rear. There was no need for Morgan to cap the number of rounds he expected from the riflemen; time and distance would accomplish this for him.

The resolution was two-fold. Morgan knew the riflemen could fire no more than twice. The men with muskets, on the other hand, could reload four times a minute. Requiring them to fire three volleys would take less than a minute. Morgan capped their participation at three volleys, then allowed them to withdraw to the rear of the Continental line.

One question remains. How did Lee get this wrong? Lee erred in much of his reporting on Cowpens. Two versus three shots from the militia only provided a down payment on the total of deficiencies in his account of the battle. In Cowpens Reexamined, I go through much of Lee’s version of events. Lee, a powerful and popular writer, set the stage for much of what is commonly accepted about Cowpens. Unfortunately, for all his gifts as a writer, he was less impressive as a historian.